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"Little town near Baton Rouge," came the reply. Shattuck nodded as if that
explained everything.
"About the coyote," Chester reminded the rancher curiously.
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"Yeah. We came out one morning, a couple of days ago, and found two of them, a
male and his bitch, lying side by side just outside the henhouse. They'd dug
under the fence I'd put up around it. So I
guess they'd already been inside and were coming out again, with one bird
between them.
"When they come out, something had stopped them clean. They just lay there in
the yard. I thought they were dead at first, but you could see their eyes move
and that they were still breathing. So David and I took them way out behind
the tank. When we checked them yesterday evening, we saw where they'd gotten
up and run off. I don't expect them to come back again. Something shook them
up pretty bad.
"Now, this doctor here has been saying that something knocked these fellows
down and frazzled them good without killing them. They look just like those
two coyotes."
"Make a note, Captain," Chester told the special forces officer, "of when we
can expect them to come around again."
"Yes, sir."
Under the captain's direction, stretchers were used to ferry the motionless
black-clad shapes to the waiting helicopters. When the whup-whup of many
blades had faded to the south, Calumet spoke quietly to the rancher.
"You realize what this means, don't you; Mr. Shattuck?"
"Always did hate rhetorical questions," came the piercing voice of Beth
Shattuck. "They're what pass for smarts in Hollywood. Ask a lot of questions
that you can make other folk give the answers to and they think you're
downright brilliant. Suppose you tell us what it means, good-lookin'."
Slightly unsettled at the compliment, Calumet wrestled with a reply. "It
means," he finally burst out, "that that thing up m your hayloft is dangerous.
It paralyzed a couple of animals, and now it's apparently done the same thing
to a large group of armed men. I saw guns in that room. Did any of you hear a
shot?"
"Can't say as we did," Shattuck confessed. Calumet smiled grimly.
"That means that the craft-" He pointed toward the glowing object up in the
barn. "-incapacitated nearly dozen experienced, no doubt ruthless individuals?
whether they were directly in front of it or out on road, before any of them
could resist in any way. I believe any reasonable legal authority, on learning
that, would classify the device as dangerous and order it removed by the
proper supervisory personnel.
"What will your Mr. Wheaton have to say about that?" he finished.
"Don't know," Shattuck admitted.
"He was called back to San Francisco on business," his wife informed them,
"but he'll be back if we need him, don't you worry. All we have to do is give
him a call."
"Give him a call?" Chester looked confused. "I thought you didn't have a
telephone out here."
"We don't. We got a lady in Cisco takes phone calls for us and relays them to
the ranch via CB radio.
We can get messages out the same way. One of them sent Cable hotfooting out of
here two days ago.
Took the plane from Abilene to Dallas and then out to the coast." Her
expression turned angry.
"Now, that thing up there hasn't killed a soul. It didn't kill those coyotes,
and I don't expect it really injured those men. But I can see how you could
jumble it up in a court to where you'd make it look like the thing was
dangerous."
"Please believe me, Mrs. Shattuck," Calumet pleaded, "we don't want to take
anything that's rightfully yours. You'll be suitably reimbursed just for
finding it, I promise in the name of the government. In fact, in a few days
you should be hearing from-"
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"The President?" David blurted from the swing. "Ah, he called two nights ago.
It was something!"
"I see," murmured Calumet, clearly surprised. "Uh, what did he say?"
"Pretty much what you all have told us, Mr. Calumet," Shattuck informed them.
"Went on about how important the proper study of that thing would be to the
country. How I ought to do my patriotic duty and turn it over to you without
causing anyone any trouble and about how, like you just said, the government
would make things right by us." He paused.
"I told him that if he wanted to make things right by us, he ought to take a
look at how our taxes have gone up here for the past eight years."
"What did he say?" inquired a fascinated Chester.
"Said he'd look into it. Sounded like he meant it, too." The rancher pulled a
pipe from a shirt pocket, commenced stuffing it with tobacco. At least,
Chester was fairly sure it was tobacco.
"Reckon he's no better and no worse than any other Washington politician. They
all sound sincere.
Anyhow," Shattuck finished, lighting up, "I told him we'd cooperate."
"You did!" Calumet seemed to rise off the ground, turned to shout toward the
barn. "Sarah, Perry-we can have it."
"In four days time," Beth Shattuck put in. Calumet turned back, blinking.
"In four days? Why four days?"
"Well," she went on, since her husband was puffing away, "we don't believe
like some folks do in keeping the lights up until New Year's. It's Christmas
we celebrate!. People think it's kind of funny of us to take them down so
early, but then, they think we're kind of funny too."
"That's for sure," David put in, evidently relishing his family's notoriety.
"And they're right, for the most part," his mother went on. "For hereabouts,
we are somethin' out of ordinary. Of course, we think everybody else around is
a bit crazy, so there's a nice balance struck."
"Four days," Calumet grumbled. "I suppose we can wait, but-" He indicated the
empty living room
"-what if more of their types show up?"
"Now, I have to admit, that's a problem," agreed Shattuck, speaking around the
stem of his pipe.
"Soviets, you think?"
"Possibly," replied Chester guardedly. "One of them, their leader, was our
driver. They knew exactly what was going on all the time, through him. But we
have nothing far to indicate who they were working for." He indicated the
fluorescent alien craft.
"That would have been worth anybody's trouble. Sure it might have been the
Soviets, maybe the
Chinese." his surprise, he found he was chuckling. "Or perhaps the French, or
the Rockefeller
Foundation, I don't know. Whoever it was will find out how monumentally
unsuccessful they were.
"So if you don't mind, just as a precaution, we'll post a suitable guard
around the ranch for the next four days."
"You don't mean you're going to let them keep it up there?" a startled Calumet
broke in.
"What difference will four days make, Mr. Calumet?" Chester wanted to know,
speaking in a sharp military manner for the first time. He was feeling a
little lightheaded. "Remember the unfavorable publicity we could generate. We
don't want Mr. Wheaton flying back from San Francisco with a planeload of
panting photographers drooling at his heels.
"When the proper time comes, I want to see the public informed of our
discoveries through scientific journals and channels, as I'm certain you
do-not through the
National Enquirer.
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Besides, it appears that the device likes it here. Any attempt to move it
before we understand what motivates it and we could all be lying like logs out
in the yard there.
"Anyhow," he added at the crestfallen expression on the young scientist's
face, "I don't see why we couldn't set up a few trailers here where you could
study the device without having to move it . . . if the
Shattucks will give us permission." He faced the rancher. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]